This subtle island green change has fans frustrated at the Players

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — There’s a unusual sensation that occurs when one steps into the colossus surrounding of the famed island inexperienced seventeenth on the Gamers Championship. The music stops. The power shifts. And for the one time all yr in skilled golf, the followers odor blood.

In near-all different moments in near-all different golf tournaments, there’s a real sense of goodwill among the many golf trustworthy. They need to see nice photographs, executed at a excessive stage, from one of the best gamers on this planet. However not on the seventeenth. It’s right here that architect Pete Dye’s imaginative and prescient (or his wife, Alice’s) involves life, and that followers’ worst instincts start to take over.

“C’mon Matsu-YAAAM-a, dunk one within the drink!” One phonetically challenged fan pleaded from off the facet of 17 on Friday morning whereas the previous Masters champ surveyed his shot beneath.

“I’m seeing too many birdies,” whined one other.

The issue, it appeared, was reverse to the one confronted by many PGA Tour occasions this yr, during which probably the most well-known gamers have struggled to carry out, resulting in a string of first-time and little-known winners. Right here on the seventeenth, one of the best gamers on this planet had been performing too nicely, striping 140-yard wedges with an off-the-cuff and authoritarian effectivity. After a sucker pin yielded an early-week ace, a rarity, for Ryan Fox on Thursday, Friday’s way-back pin placement offered all method of makeable 2s … and maybe extra presciently, not almost as many deposits into the greenside lake.

And the trigger of their frustration? Effectively, it might be noticed rimming across the seventeenth inexperienced in luscious, tee-high tufts that measured a small however notable distance longer than the placing floor. It was the collar of the inexperienced, and by the point Friday afternoon rolled round on the East Coast, it’d earned one other identify: The Bumper. All day lengthy, whereas the sloping island inexperienced on No. 17 was inundated with golf balls, The Bumper served as a protecting wall for golf’s finest, holding tee photographs with all method of dangerous intentions safely on dry land. Certain, the skinny wraparound of inexperienced grass required awkward chip photographs with much more awkward stances, but it surely didn’t require golf’s finest gamers to see their ball drop into the pond across the inexperienced, and that was upsetting for the followers.

For these watching from residence, the sheer lack of carnage was an indication of a nagging difficulty in fashionable golf, the place programs are catered to encourage low scoring and challenges are softened to maintain from drawing the ire of the enjoying class. Shouldn’t the Gamers, yearly one in every of golf’s hardest occasions, demand its gamers execute a sincerely good golf shot to stay on the island inexperienced? And isn’t a wedge shot that spins exhausting and quick sufficient to roll off a large island inexperienced deserving of rolling into the water? On this approach, The Bumper was a bodily manifestation of a extra important difficulty: professional golf’s need to see its gamers pleased, and golf followers’ need to see the game’s gamers challenged. The PGA Tour’s flagship occasion, it appeared, had made its alternative.

For these watching from up shut, although, the island inexperienced’s safety was a difficulty of a extra mundane selection: It was boring — and these individuals hadn’t entered the colossus to be bored. By the higher a part of two rounds, the seventeenth had yielded simply 9 water balls and solely 12 double-bogeys or worse, and for these chargeable for watching the motion, the drama was rather more entertaining when these numbers had been safely doubled (if not tripled).

One group in attendance at TPC Sawgrass on Friday didn’t share their enthusiasm, although, and that was the gamers. They appeared to benefit from the collar of the inexperienced saving their balls from the water very a lot, thanks for asking, significantly when factoring for a way the absence of such a protecting measure might have an effect on their efforts at making the lower and incomes a bit of this weekend’s $25 million purse. Requested for a superb purpose why The Bumper ought to exist, JT Poston supplied a pair.

“I really feel prefer it’s all the time sort of been that approach,” he stated. “If there wasn’t any tough there, as tender because the greens are and as quick as they’ve them, it will be backed up fairly good there, I really feel like. Numerous golf balls would find yourself within the water, particularly yesterday. I imply, even, you realize, you can make the argument you bought to manage your spin and I agree and I feel guys attempt to do a reasonably good job of that, however they’re simply so tender, it’s sort of exhausting to maintain it from coming backwards as soon as it goes.”

These arguments, after all, might be utilized in favor of eradicating the collar. Numerous balls within the water could be good for leisure, and demanding the professionals management their spin sufficient to land a shot on the inexperienced could be good for the standard of the sector, too. However in a match that’s yearly one in every of golf’s slowest (Friday’s second spherical was not prone to get accomplished on Friday regardless of two days of sensible climate and prolonged daylight from daylight financial savings), it was truthful to surprise if slowing down the competitors any additional was in service of leisure or in battle with it.

The ultimate reply on The Bumper wouldn’t be discovered on Friday afternoon on the Gamers. Like most all the pieces else in the course of the first 5 days on the PGA Tour’s flagship occasion, conversations round it remained highly theoretical.

And theoretical isn’t essentially dangerous. Because the Tour wrangles with the altering scope of a $3 billion funding from the SSG and converses about untold billions with the Saudi PIF, the most important questions dealing with golf are about its capability to generate curiosity and, by extension, return on funding. Practically everybody agrees that bettering the game’s leisure product for the followers is one of the best ways to succeed in these ends, and watching one of the best golfers on this planet wrestle to include the kind of unmitigated rage sometimes reserved to your weekend spherical in Myrtle Seaside would unquestionably be good leisure.

As the most important leisure supply on the PGA Tour’s largest occasion, the island inexperienced has lengthy been a metaphor for the way in which the Tour conducts its enterprise. As soon as upon a time it was a mirrored image of the Tour’s cavalier need to construct programs for the professional recreation. Extra just lately it was an analogy for the Tour’s cartoonified, score-at-all-costs fashion of golf. Whether or not The Bumper lives or dies remains to be to be decided, and surprisingly that’s a metaphor, too.

There’s life on the island inexperienced. This week, it’s discovered within the water.

James Colgan

Golf.com Editor

James Colgan is a information and options editor at GOLF, writing tales for the web site and journal. He manages the Scorching Mic, GOLF’s media vertical, and makes use of his on-camera expertise throughout the model’s platforms. Previous to becoming a member of GOLF, James graduated from Syracuse College, throughout which period he was a caddie scholarship recipient (and astute looper) on Lengthy Island, the place he’s from. He might be reached at james.colgan@golf.com.